If you don’t have a four-year college degree, you’re hardly alone. The majority of US working age adults do not.
You may assume you have little chance of developing a well-paying career with benefits and growth potential at a Fortune 500 company. After all, so many jobs require a Bachelor’s degree.
But your chances may be better than you think, thanks to a growing network of white-collar apprenticeship programs that lead to jobs at blue chip employers, including big tech players like Google, Amazon and Salesforce.
Such programs result in paid, on-the-job training, benefits, coaching and access to employee and alumni networks.
Facing reality
Over the past five years, employers have been trying to solve for two things:
One is a long-predicted skilled labor shortage — especially in technology. The other is the need to actively address systemic inequities and unconscious bias in their hiring and promotions practices.
To stay competitive, they’ve realized they have to broaden their search for high-potential candidates, since there is now greater recognition that no race, ethnicity, gender, zip code or diploma has a monopoly on talent.
“We’re a talent-based company. It’s our only asset. So we widened the aperture,” said Pallavi Verma, a senior managing director at consulting firm Accenture, which created its first apprenticeship program in Chicago in 2016 and has since brought on 1,200 apprentices across 35 cities. “[The program] is part of our talent strategy.”
Year Up is an organization that provides tuition-free, college-credit-eligible job training in 29 US locations. And like many nonprofits and community colleges around the country, it partners with employers, like Accenture, to find high-potential apprentices.
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